


Just Staying

by tenderly_wicked



Series: Survivors [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, dark!Sherlock, which is partly John's fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 21:40:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2667278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderly_wicked/pseuds/tenderly_wicked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock remembers being strong and cruel. He doesn’t feel like that anymore, but he wants to, desperately so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Staying

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to my beta primalmusic!

Sherlock remembers being strong and cruel. Driving his foot into the cabbie’s shoulder, or taking a riding crop to a corpse. He remembers the rush of power that swept through him.

Today, a few wounds and betrayals later, he feels nothing, like he’s been drained of all his energy. Maybe that’s why he’s drinking in a pub. Because he’s drained. Not that it helps much.

John, on the other hand, is still as cruel as he’d been that night when he’d shot the cabbie – with an intention to kill, not to incapacitate and bring to justice. Sherlock might have toyed with the illusion that the good, brave doctor had done it for him, but honestly, John would have rescued anyone else just as well. It had been the same when John had walked into the drug den with a tire lever in his hand, to drag out a boy he barely knew. The lad might have imagined that John had come for his sake. Human error. John only had wanted a fight.

Sherlock had once called him a kind man. That was more of a flattery. The truth was more complex. John saved lives, yes, lots of them, and he liked it, so he might be good at heart, but a kind man would never say, “Sherlock, one more word and you will not need morphine”, would he?

Now it doesn’t matter, really. What’s the point of thinking it over again and again, especially when you’re alone in a pub? Well, not as alone as Sherlock wishes to be; there’s a cheerful crowd babbling all around him. A sturdy man with a half-empty glass and hollow eyes sits down beside him at the counter. A short haircut, military style. Strong hands. Hard, calloused skin between his thumb and forefinger. A sniper.

“You looked funny with a red dot between your eyes,” he says impassively. “Maybe I should have killed you then, at the pool.”

“Maybe,” Sherlock agrees politely. Come to think of it, that wouldn’t have been a bad death, at the moment he’d thought that John cared for him so much as to be willing to sacrifice his life. _Sherlock, run!_ But perhaps that had been adrenaline talking too.

“Funny, this,” the man continues. “We should be long dead, and look at us both, downing pints.”

So that’s Jim’s Tiger. The famous Sebastian. Sherlock studies him sideways.

“I was at Bart’s too, you know,” Sebastian says in the same conversational tone. “In the building opposite. I could have pulled the trigger instead of letting you jump, but there was no one to give me that order.”

“Poor Tiger,” Sherlock croons, with a sad grin. “You’re on your own now. Why haven’t you found yourself another master?”

“Why haven’t you found yourself another blogger?”

They glare at each other, hostile, but then both relax. The truth is not offending. They still have the courage to face it.

For a while, they drink their beers in silence.

“Don’t you want to alert your police friends as to where I am?” Sebastian asks at last.

“Not really.” It’s interesting again, if just a little, and it hasn’t been for quite a while.

Sebastian nods. “Okay.” He sounds a tad disappointed. It’s very much like a death wish that he’s come here today, with a risk that Sherlock will hand him over to the police. Is it that bad?

_“Staying alive. It’s so boring isn’t it?” Jim said. “It’s just… staying.”_

“Did you miss him?”

There’s something in the way Sebastian doesn’t reply that makes Sherlock suggest, nonchalantly but with his pulse suddenly elevating: “I could make you forget. For a while.”

Sebastian lets out a nervous chortle. “Are you picking me up? As clever a detective as you are, you should know I’m not…”

Sherlock cuts him off: “I don’t care what you are and what you are not. I said I could make you forget.”

This man is not John. There’s no need to be delicate.

A sudden gleam of interest in Sebastian’s eyes tells him that his move was the right one. Maybe it’s more the tone than the words that makes Sebastian almost amenable.

“What are you suggesting, anyway?” the man wonders, with a hint of hesitancy masked by fake amusement.

Sherlock arches a brow at him. “Wouldn’t it spoil everything if I told you now in detail what I was planning to do to you?”

A short pause. Then a business-like question: “Your flat or mine?”

“Yours.”

Sherlock doesn’t want Mrs. Hudson to interfere at the least appropriate moment. It means he’ll have to improvise without any implements at hand, but he’ll think of something. Sebastian’s belt with a heavy buckle will do, and his sweaty t-shirt as a gag, and the business end of a cigarette. _How very convenient that I started smoking again,_ dances a thought at the back of Sherlock’s mind.

Maybe Sebastian has latex gloves. Sherlock doesn’t want to ruin his own, leather ones.

He knows that Sebastian won’t fight him, or maybe he will, but just for the sake of struggle, not because he’ll be willing to escape. Poor Tiger. He wants to feel again too. Something. Anything. Whatever.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a sequel to this story: [Tigers Make Good Pets](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3601530)


End file.
